"On the subject of the feminist business, I just never think, that is never think of qualities which are specifically feminine or masculine. I suppose I divide people into two classes: the Irksome and the Non-Irksome without regard to sex. Yes and there are the Medium-Irksome and the Rare Irksome."The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
"Nobody attains reality for my mother until he eats." (Ever know anyone like this? I sure have. Miss you, Granny!)
"Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God. The person outside the Church attaches a different meaning to it than the person in. For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not of restriction. It preserves mystery for the human mind. Henry James said young women of the future would know nothing of mystery or manners. He had no business to limit it to one sex."
"Why is Form beautiful? Because, I think, it helps us meet our worst fear, the suspicion that life may be chaos and that therefore our suffering is without meaning..."
"William Carlos Williams said that poets write for a single reason - to give witness to splendor (a word also used by Thomas Aquinas in defining the beautiful). It is a useful word, especially for a photographer, because it implies light - light of overwhelming intensity. The Form toward which art points is of an incontrovertible brilliance, but it is also far too intense to examine directly. We are compelled to understand Form by its fragmentary reflection in the daily objects around us; art will never fully define light."
(bold emphasis mine.)
Beauty in Photography
"Forget writing, it's a trivial matter. But day in day out, when the inarticulate patient struggles to lay himself bare for you, or with nothing more than a boil on his back is so caught off balance that he reveals some secret twist of a whole community's pathetic way of thought, a man is suddenly seized again with a desire to speak of the underground stream which for a moment has come up just under the surface."
The Doctor Stories by William Carlos Williams
"As they continue to follow the path deeper into the woods, the mother keeps an eye on her daughter, but Josip is staring simultaneously inward and upward, and also connecting to the colors blazing all around him. 'We are so blind, so blind!' he groans, flailing his arms for emphasis, his face flushing, his voice intense with the excitement of this new discovery. 'It's as if heaven is raining miracles upon us, but we cannot see because we do not look. It's as if fabulous birds fall unceasingly from the skies!'
'Peacocks and ostriches?' she laughs.
'No, no, I mean fabulous because they exist - fabulous birds are ---'
At the very moment when he flings out his right arm and says fabulous birds, a flash of blue catches his eye at the end of his hand. Halting abruptly, he gazes along his arm, off the springboard of his hand, and sees the stroke of blue lying in a pile of red leaves. He drops his arms and goes to it, kneeling down to find out what it is. It's a bird. A very little bird that is unfamiliar to him. Miriam kneels beside him as he picks it up in his hand and lets it rest there, as if it were sleeping. It is warm, it has died only a moment before.
'An Indigo Bunting', whispers Miriam. 'I've never seen one before, never this close, I mean.'
...The bird's apparently insignificant form is so elegant, so perfectly shaped for the wind, its form and function so integrated, that the genius of whoever sculpted it is beyond question. Moreover, its feathers are a rare kind of iridescent blue, falling from the turquoise of the head to the dark indigo tail in a perfect gradation through that part of the spectrum, without any discernible transition zones of shade or tone.
'Who designed this little masterpiece?' says Miriam shaking her head in wonder.
Josep lays its body on the ground and covers it with leaves.
'And so death entered the world', Miriam whispers. They walk on, and for a while can say nothing.
Island of the World by Michael O'Brien
Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:28
Our Father, which art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done,
in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
The Lord's Prayer
"We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about it, but because we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary in fashion. A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village: the scholar has lived in many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age."
Ode on Solitude
Happy the man, whose wish and care
A few paternal acres bound,
Content to breathe his native air,
In his own ground.
Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread,
Whose flocks supply him with attire,
Whose trees in summer yield him shade,
In winter fire.
Blest! who can unconcern'dly find
Hours, days, and years slide soft away,
In health of body, peace of mind,
Quiet by day,
Sound sleep by night; study and ease
Together mix'd; sweet recreation,
And innocence, which most does please,
With meditation.
Thus let me live, unseen, unknown;
Thus unlamented let me dye;
Steal from the world, and not a stone
Tell where I lye.
